On a Whim
by Karin J
Summary: Elena needed adventure. Dexter needed someone to test his latest invention. It was on a whim that she was chosen, but she's more perfect for the job than he ever could have imagined. Dexter/OC. This story follows the main plot line.*I plan to finish this*
1. Prologue

"Initializing profile: zh20e98f72hez...  
Initialization complete. Profile for applicant zh20e98f72hez acquired.  
Name: Zen, Elena.  
Age: 17.  
Gender: Female  
Occupation: Burger Dome Cashier.  
Skills: Math and Science.  
Hobbies: Calc-"

"She sounds great. I choose her."

"But Dexter, I have not given you all of her data…"

"I'm tired of reviewing applications, computress!" Dexter exclaimed. "She sounds fine, I'll just choose her. There shouldn't be any problem. Send her the information regarding the experiment."

"Yes, Dexter."

Elena sighed as she pulled out her keys to enter her house. Her parents would be working all night again. She was hungry, but she was too tired from work to prepare anything for dinner. She scolded herself for not grabbing anything at Burger Dome before she had left. Then again, she was a little sick of all of the fast food she'd been eating recently.

Too exhausted to do anything else, she plopped down in front of her best friend, AKA her laptop. She logged in to her e-mail account and deleted junk mail. She never got much worthwhile e-mail. One caught her eye, though. It was from DexLabs. She sighed. It was probably a rejection letter.

She was getting nothing but rejection letters lately. Harvard didn't want her. Yale certainly didn't want her. Princeton? Forget about it. It wasn't that she wasn't smart. She was in the top five percent in her class. She just didn't have much of a life. She wasn't in any clubs. She wasn't in the band. She never volunteered for anything, never helped anyone in class, and she didn't even have any friends. She didn't really stand out. Well, not counting her hair.

When Elena was in middle school, she was tired of everyone ignoring her and taking her for granted, so she decided to make a statement. She was going to dye her hair. She wasn't stupid, though. She knew that no one would notice unless it was really odd. She decided to bleach it white. It hurt like hell and she had to do it repeatedly, but it worked. Her strawberry-blonde hair was turned to snow. She shocked her mother, classmates, and teachers. They talked about it for days. It didn't last though. After about a week, the effect wore off and Elena was back where she started. She never tried to stand out after that. It was simply too much work. She kept her hair white, though, as a sort of symbol of victory. Plus, she liked the way it looked. Her skin was light, but dark enough to pull it off.

Elena opened the e-mail and her eyes lit up for the first time in a long time. She had been selected! She wondered how on Earth she was chosen. She decided that she didn't care, though. She was finally accepted for something! She actually had something to look forward to.

"Who are you?" A red-haired woman asked. Elena stood on the other side of the door.

"My name's Elena. Um, is Dexter here?"

"Oh yes," the woman, presumably Dexter's mother, said. "One moment. Dexter!"

A red-headed teenager appeared in the doorway. "You must be Elena. I'm Dexter."

It was hard to not stare. Elena had pictured an old geezer living by himself, not a short and geeky teenager playing scientist. Was that really a lab coat he was wearing? And what was up with that accent? Dexter was also staring at Elena. Her white hair gave her quite the striking appearance.

"Come with me," Dexter said after a moment.

"Well, you keep busy," Elena said, looking around Dexter's laboratory.

Dexter shrugged. "It's a business." He led her to a big machine.

"The e-mail I sent should have explained the procedure thoroughly. Do you have any questions?"

"No," Elena said. She just hoped this worked. She couldn't bear yet another disappointment in her life.

"Go on, then."

Elena did. She clambered into the machine. Dexter explained a few more last minute things. The last thing she heard was a girl saying, "Ooh, what does this button do?"

Then there was blackness and a message saying:

Error: Timeskip Malfunction

A/N: I hope you liked the first chapter! I'll try to finish this up soon before I get sick of Fusion Fall.

I'd like to admit right here, right now that I've always kind of had a crush on Dexter. There, I've said it. Yes, even when he was a little box with hands I had a crush on him. He's just so brilliant. And cute.  
I've always had a thing for redheads. And glasses, too. So you can imagine how I felt when I started playing Fusion Fall. Kyaa! X3 He's so hot!

Ahem. Anyway, Elena Zen is my real character's name. She also has white hair. Please don't pull a Mary Sue card out on me, I know what they are and I'm against them. I just really want to use my character because I love her so much. I'm trying to give her a good non-Sue personality.

Okay, so at this point in the story, Dexter is about 13 years old. There are absolutely no romantic sparks between them. Dexter wants his invention tested out, and Elena wants some adventure in her otherwise boring life. That is the extent of their relationship at this point. It will progress very gradually, as it should with the characters' personalities. Neither is looking for love, after all.

I play Fusion Fall daily with Elena and, when I'm not on a mission, I usually hang out around Tech Square (for obvious reasons…). If you see Elena, be sure to say hi!


	2. The Future

Elena came to on the ground. Needless to say, she wasn't pleased. She groaned as she pulled herself up. When she finally looked around, though, she froze.

The world… was green.

Well, it wasn't like everything was green. There were just green splotches all over the ground and buildings and… the sky. The sky was horribly green. In the distant sky she thought she saw a planet of sorts. It was huge and misshapen. She shivered. She wasn't sure if she liked this at all. She wondered just how far in to the future she had traveled. As she was pondering this, a boy and girl ran up to her.

"Are you crazy?" The girl asked. "Why are you wandering around the streets?"

"It's dangerous!" The boy added.

"I just got here," Elena said, crossly. "I didn't know."

"What?" The girl asked. "Never mind, just come with us."

The boy and girl ran off, Elena trailing behind them. She was quite angry at this point. She wanted to know just what was going on. After a few minutes of running, a bunch of huge, green, globs appeared in front of them. Elena almost flipped out. They had faces.

"Dangit!" The girl said. "Here, take this weapon to defend yourself. Get rid of the small ones, and we'll get the big guy."

Elena fumbled with the gun that the girl had given her. She had only ever seen this kind of thing in movies. She pointed the gun at one of the three globs and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. As the globs advanced, she backed away, searching her mind for what she did wrong.

"Take the safety off, idiot!" The girl shouted.

Duh. Elena looked for some kind of switch. She flipped it and then fired. It worked! She shot at the globs until they were all dead. She looked over at the boy and girl and saw that the big one was also down.

"Okay, I demand to know what the hell is going on!" Elena spat at them. She was very, very angry at that point.

"What do you mean?" The boy asked.

"Who are you, and what happened to this place?" Elena shouted.

"You mean you don't know?" The girl asked.

"No! I only just got here in that stupid red-haired kid's time machine!"

"What?" The girl asked, shocked. "You mean you're Elena?"

"How do you know my name?" Elena asked.

"Dexter told us about you!" The girl said. "I guess we owe you an explanation, then. I'm Number Five, and this is Ben. A while ago, this guy named Fuse sent a whole bunch of fusion creatures to this world. We've been fighting the best that we can, but it's not enough. You need to repair the time machine so that you can go into the past to help in the battle against Fuse."

"Why me? Elena asked, sighing.

"Don't ask me," Number Five said. "It was Dexter's idea."

"I'll kill that boy," Elena muttered under her breath as a girl, er, floated up to them.

"What's wrong, Buttercup?" Ben asked.

"Dexter's has disappeared!" Buttercup said. "I think he's in the infected zone!"

"Why don't you go check it out?" Ben asked Elena. "You need more training."

"Fine," Elena sighed.

"Oh, here's a map and a map marker," Buttercup said, handing her the map.

Elena grabbed it and sighed, heading over to the warp pad. Something called a 'DexBot' warped her into something called an 'infected zone'. When she entered, she got a message.

"Hurry!" She heard Dexter's voice say. "I'm trapped in fusion Buttercup's lair! Quickly, to the fusion portal!"

"Whatever, kid," Elena said. She went into a bunch of weird slimy things and found herself in some sort of green tunnel thing. She followed it through to find Dexter. He was, er, taller than she remembered. He was even taller than her.

"Elena?" He questioned. "I haven't seen you in a long time!"

"Um, you're taller than I remember…"

"Well, many years have passed!" Dexter said. "But never mind that for now. We need to defeat fusion Buttercup!"

With Dexter helping out, it was pretty easy to defeat her. When she was gone, a little version of Buttercup appeared.

"What's this?" Elena asked.

"It's a nano," Dexter replied. "They give you more powers. They are quite useful."

"Oh," Elena said.

"Anyway, let's get out of here so I can explain what's going on better," Dexter said.

"Right," Elena said. "I've got more than a few questions for you, mister."

"Yeah, er, sorry about all of this," Dexter apologized. "When I first sent you into the future, I didn't know that this was going to happen. It's a good thing I chose you, though. You seem to be handling things fine."

"How did you choose me anyway?" Elena asked. "No one ever chooses me."

"Well…" Dexter started. He didn't get to finish. The ground shook wildly. "Get out of here, quickly! I'll catch up. I need to make sure that fusion Buttercup didn't steal anything from my lab."

"Don't be stupid!" Elena said in a panic. "What if you can't get out?"

"I'll be right behind you. Now get out!"

Elena jumped on the warp pad and the DexBot there led her to the top of a building. A chubby boy on the other side of a bridge stood waiting by a hovering vehicle.

"Get over here!" The boy said. "Hurry!"

Elena looked back at the warp pad before running across the bridge. A flying fusion monster landed in front of her. She attacked it several time, but to no avail. Just as she was about to give up, her Buttercup nano stunned the monster and she escaped to the vehicle. She took one last glance at the warp pad before climbing in. The vehicle started flying off. She turned to the boy.

"What about Dex-" She started. A huge crash interrupted her. They looked out the window to see all of the buildings crash into the ground. Her eyes widened. Dexter was still in there! After a few minutes of flying, the vehicle landed on safe ground, and everyone got off. The chubby boy put some kind of device on the ground. A hologram of Dexter appeared.

"Despite our best efforts," the hologram said, "Tech Square has been lost. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. Continue the plans as scheduled." Dexter looked around before frantically saying, "Dexter out."

"He'll be fine," Number Five said. Elena looked at her and saw that she looked worried. Everyone looked worried. Even Elena looked worried. Dexter was in trouble. She didn't have much time to dwell on that fact, though. They immediately got her to work on repairing the time machine.

"And be quick about it!" Mandark said to Elena snobbishly as he gave her a new quest.

"Fine, fine," Elena said. She had been in the future for weeks. It would have bothered her more if she had friends or family members that cared. Saving the world was also more fun than taking orders at Burger Dome, though some of the tasks that she was required to complete were boring and repetitive. She wanted to work on more interesting missions, but she knew that they would come with time and experience.

"This is the last step," Mandark said impatiently. "Then you'll be able to go to the past."

Elena's eyes widened. It would finally be over soon. Well, she'd still have to do some work in the past, but it couldn't take that long, right? She'd miss the people of the future, but she'd see them again in the past. Well, they wouldn't remember, but she would. Time travel confused Elena.

"Are you ready?" Mandark asked Elena.

"Yeah," Elena replied.

"You sure?"

"Positive."

"Okay then," Mandark said. "The DexBot is over there. It'll take you to the past."

"Okay," Elena said, making her way over to the pad. "Bye."

"Good riddance," Mandark said. Was that a tear rolling down his cheek? Perhaps it was caused by two similar minds parting ways forever. The Mandark of the future would never see her again, and when she returned to the past, the Mandark there would not know her.

"I'll see you in the past!" Elena called to him.

"It doesn't do any good to tell ME that, freak."

Elena laughed and approached the DexBot.

"Preparing for transport," It alerted her. She waved to the people of the future.

"Goodbye everyone! I'll see you later!"

And then blackness again.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed it!

Sorry it took so long. I meant to post this awhile back but never got around to it before I went to Texas for Christmas. I'm moving, so I won't post for awhile, but it shouldn't take too long.

Mandark and Elena are NOT friends. Trust me. They pretty much hate each other. Either way, in a sense they will never see each other again. And they're both loners, in a way. Elena is a bit sad that no one will remember her.

They never heard from Dexter again after what happened in Tech Square, so Elena still has no feelings for him. The reason why she kept looking back was because he was the only one that she knew from before she was sent to the future. She feels more comfortable around him because of that. He doesn't seem as strange as the others. Oh, and Dexter is about 20 in the future.

Now that the future is done with, it'll all take place in the past. Essentially, the first two chapters were just the beginning. Chapter three is where it all starts.


End file.
